Akai SynthStation49 Full-Fledged iPad Keyboard Dock

For the budding musician in you, if that budding musician is extremely ambitious, Akai has made the SynthStation49 iPhone and iPad dock.

Not one of the smaller docks, this is a full-fledged, 49-key velocity-sensitive keyboard. It even has manual pitch control and drum pads. It’s also the follow-up to a previous SynthStation dock, which was much smaller and less, shall we say, professionally done.

My guess is that synching a keyboard painlessly to your iPad has musical recording advantages, in the form of apps, since it’s iOS CoreMIDI compatible. There’s direct in-app MIDI recording, output through ¼” jacks, and if your iPad isn’t handy, you can use the SynthStation49 as a USB MIDI controller.

Having not yet been approved by Apple, pricing details are not available.